The Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show, 2/23/12

Mitt Romney Loves Lamp; The Tea Party Wagging the Republican Dog; Romney Briefly Made Sense on Spending; No Transvaginal Ultrasound Law in Virginia; The Muslim Rumors Are Back; Pat Buchanan is a Cry Baby; Racism and the GOP; Politifact is a Disaster; and much more! Brought to you by Bubble Genius!

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While VA walking back the trans-vaginal ultrasound bill may feel like a victory in the narrow sense of the idea, the theocrats and pro-lifers are not going away. Ever. They think they are right, and that we are wrong; that god is on their side and that we support murder. And they will never stop chipping away at women’s right to control what happens in and to their own bodies. Not ever.

“That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it will never stop – ever – until you’re dead.”

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@ Chez re: Red meat social issues dragged out as a strategy to avoid actually governing.
It seems to me that you added an unnecessary term to the equation – that the desired end is to boost book sales and land pundit spots seated to the right of George Will…
Simply avoiding governing is the whole point.
Everything the Republicans have touched; every idea they’ve put forward since Bush boarded that helicopter (well…for the past 40 years…) has turned to shit and, for anyone who cares to examine the evidence or their own experience (leaving aside the 1%) rather obviously so.
Not merely shit but a plethora of giant turds in the punchbowl, with a variety of foul smelling ass kabobs scattered across the Confederate flag they’re using for a tablecloth.
At some point, even these cretinous buffoons realized that it might be a good idea to stop stabbing themselves in the face so, rather than actually make any effort at governing, they cast about for divisive wedge issues about which they can blatantly lie without risking being caught squatting over the gravy boat…again.
It isn’t working very well (for anyone, and especially the GOP) but I’d hesitate to paint juicing their bobblehead profile as their goal, even in the face of solid anecdotal evidence like Caribou Barbie.

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@ B0b re: The bit where you were pretending to answer a question about French art…
For a second, I assumed the French art question was so that you could play an obscure Norm MacDonald sound bite…
I went back and listened to it three times.
Norm MacDonald audio doppleganger. Cool.

Dan_in_DE

The Michigan trees are just right. According to Bob’s all-time favorite emo-prog, Michael Moore — who was on the Maddow show just the other night, this is actually a thing.

Paraphrasing Moore, “the trees in Wisconsin are way too tall and the trees down in Indiana are like stunted, shrubby little things.” And apparently, the trees in MI are the Goldilocks trees..

So yeah, apparently Michiganders know what he means when Romney praises the local trees. Lol

That’s interesting from a sociological stand point. I mean, that a candidate can say something that is regionally or locally understood and sound fine to those around him, but nationally makes him look like an idiot. Like Perry and “N*ggerhead Ranch”…what plays well in TX doesn’t do so great in NY.

muselet

Mitt Romney has no idea how to relate to common people (I’m guessing he’s comfortable enough in a corporate boardroom or down at The Club). It seems to me a combination of a silver-spoon upbringing and, bluntly, his brain not being wired right. Which would be fine except that he’s out in front of the entire nation, trying desperately to convince everyone that he should be elected president.

Romney is ill-suited to running in a bugfuck insane party like the current GOP. His issues are economic (although, like most Republicans running on economic issues, he seems to have no idea how an actual economy works: Romney’s train of economic thought is pretty much “Don’t tax me, bro!”), not social. However, since the social conservatives are running the GOP—the inmates are running the asylum—he needs to make the right noises. I actually sorta kinda feel sorry for the poor sod.

If the Rs remain in power, expect both the ultrasound and personhood bills in Virginia to reappear in 2013, protests—and complaints of overreach—be damned.

(“Every conceivable shape and size of soap that you can possibly imagine—soap in the shape of everything from lawn gnomes to Joe Lieberman.” Uh, Bob, how do you tell the difference between those?)

The less said about Pat Buchanan the better. (Did you know Pat Buchanan had a relative die at Auschwitz? He fell out of a guard tower. *rim shot*)

Sadly, Righties would rather burn the world down than give up control of it to dusky people.

Franklin Graham is a wanker, enough so that he makes his father look like a decent human being. The less said about him the better, as well.

The “be afraid of what the Kenyan usurper really is” blather is a stiffener (yeah yeah, go ahead and laugh) for the Republican base. Translation: the economy may be recovering and we may be withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, but be afraid of those dastardly, unpatriotic, un-American, cowardly, free-spending, gun-confiscating, soft-on-crime, pro-abortion Dems. See “Sadly, Righties would rather …” above.

If the Rs remain in power, expect both the ultrasound and personhood bills in Virginia to reappear in 2013, protests—and complaints of overreach—be damned.

I disagree. I think they will try this again no matter what and they’ll pull some kind of maneuver where its in the middle of the night or some kind of BS ram it through thing, ala Wisconsin. Zealots don’t care about how big the opposition is. For them it is always about principle.

muselet

You’re right, they might. I still think it’s more likely that the Rs will push for the bills next year or, if they lose their majorities, in a lame-duck session. If they try again before that, the November elections will be a bloodbath (they’re crazy, not stupid).